GRD & WEB Department Meeting

skillscommons.org

skillscommons.org ( http://www.skillscommons.org will open in a new window )
THere may be some great material in here or older projects to zoom through. Some of these may be canvas packs, but there could also be BB materials.

NCLOR
Course >> Tools >> NCLOR object
These are some great resources, but they may be old.

Some of these sources can help us so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Google academy, hubspot, codeschool, are great places we can also grab materials from. If this introduces something we don’t have time to working with, or something which may inspire a different kind of learner. If you see anything out there which has some relevance, grab it and see what you can bring to the table.

If you find little snippets created that cannot be covered in the class, but the materials already exist, run those as small, one-shot deals

Brackets in the lab

Brackets will be put in the lab. Brackets runs for free. Sublime is roughly $50 per license. We cannot use a cost program when we could also have a free resource. Our hope is to have a cradle-to-grave system of consistent program usage in WEB technologies.

Class Upgrades

GRD142 seems to miss its pace and GRD241 finds many students falling flat.
GRD110 seems to have lots of issues with retention.
WEB140 seem to run into the perrenial problem with retention. Design students seem to split- both top and bottom tier students are graphic design students

Summer schedules

Summer faculty will need to have a single day of the week. Any issues needed by Alison can be fixed by Cindy if needed

Datatel

Julie’s secret sauce may stop working. Datatel may be able to be updated in a few extra months. Datatel does not like edge

In the closing keynote to this successful online conference, Dr. Ryan Rucker returned with another fine presentation. In his discussion he outlined a path to planning your course modules using a reversed series of approaches in order to ensure that all materials and methods would meet the needs of your school as well as those of your team. The slides here were a little hard to follow, but the presentation itself was very good.

Devising a plan to build a quality driven course can be a daunting task. Should you as a teacher begin with learning objectives, lectures, readings, assignments, assessments, etc.? Its a difficult question, and everyone has their own preferred methods. Dr. Rucker went on to explain that one of the best resources to help aid in this process is the use of an instructional designer. Some issues arise when the instructional designer tries to re-integrate the curriculum without being an expert. This causes friction, and it is not normally expressed until the pressure cooker is ready to explode or already has.

Many instructional designers choose to implement a model called backwards design. This model was explained and iterated upon in the Keynote. For some teachers, I could see how this could help them to properly plan each course module/week in your online course. As our courses are already built and updated regularly, this material is somewhat old hat.

Marsha Mills and Tyler Dockery already covered this extensively when building out the new portfolio class. Beginning with the end goal in mind, we simply worked backwards. I thought this was a good resource for some teachers, but I think in terms of necessities, I guess we’re already ahead of the curve on this.

On March 20th, Tyler Dockery spoke to the GDA on Wake Tech’s Main Campus in the Engineering and Technology Building (ETB).

GDA Lecture: The Resume Workshop

The resume workshop began quickly, because we planned to view over 160 resumes in the short time we had.

Beginning with IIT’s 100 master candidate resumes, we glanced over the resumes of 100 individuals with design experience cover 1-2 decades in the field. We found them to be informative, but sedate, and not at all exciting. We found them to contain lots of information, but very, very little in the way of information that would tell us about the individual. Most students actually agreed we should skim through them faster, and that it would be easy to get lost in this shuffle of papers.

Next, we focused on 60 designs I pulled from my own sources. These gave an individual grasp quickly and easily, telling us about the individual even before we could focus on the writing involved. Students overwhelmingly decided what they liked about these designs quickly and easily. Not all were winners, and it was easy to see why or why not.

Students found that flashier resumes could quickly give the intent of the designer to the individual who would be hiring them. They agreed that one of these resumes would quickly and easily stand out in a stack of the other resumes.

We finished the discussion by talking about what careers the students wanted to pursue and how they might go about showing that thorough their resumes. Marsha Mills discussed the importance of what you say and how you say it, and the double importance of having a separate resume for web design work and graphic design work, and possible photographic or illustrative jobs. Students left with the clear understanding of how a resume is really a typographic problem, but also how it can affect their overall perception.

This year, Wake Tech Community College has fully vetted College Central Network (CCN)and CollegeCentalNetwork.com as our official hiring network. College Central is one of the most visited entry-level job sites on the Internet. It provides both students and alumni with the ability to search their respective colleges’ or universities’ secure jobs databases, plus CCN’s Jobs Central national job board, with millions of jobs posted to date. The site also features valuable content geared toward entry-level job seekers.

In an effort to get the word out to students, the school has requested that the Advertising and Graphic Design Department run the materials in our classes as a project or extra credit project. Out of 4 potential candidates, 2 final winners were both chosen from my class: Kristine Kelly and Heather Heffner.

Its always a pleasure to create projects that the school can use. It was doubly good to see actual flyers hanging around the school. We were allowed to use the new Wake Tech Logo, and the students were able to add QR codes to the flyers, which was a really nice surprise. I think it earned us some extra points.

A special thank you to Rhonda Pickett for working with us on this job. The Advertising and Graphic Design Department at Wake Tech is always ready to help, whether its a class run by Tyler Dockery, Marsha Mills, Woody Hayes, or Alison Consol. Go Wake Tech!

Developing Tomorrow’s Community College Leaders: Career Development Approaches that Enable SuccessNC

This session’s presenters: Molly Duggan, K. Paul Knott, and Ginger Bishop took us through three great leadership plans in this fantastic meeting.

In support of sharing best practices- a central goal of SuccessNC -this session focused on several successful approaches to developing faculty and staff tools, skills, and the perspectives that community colleges need in order to facilitate student success.

Three highly effective professional development approaches were explored in this session:

Community college-based grow-your-own programs
Offering “grow-your-own” programs that provide financial aid to students who agree to return to their school as teachers after graduation from college, and leadership programs which train teachers for department head or roles as deans, etc.

Succession planning, including coaching and mentoring strategies
This professional development program places a high value on coaching and mentoring to give faculty and staff members the training and skills they need to succeed and excel in the workplace. Emphasis was given on finding the proper mentor for the mentor/mentee relationship, and on the ability of co-mentoring within your programs.

I found this session, especially the co-mentoring process to be quite helpful. I think the two Wake Tech members I met earlier, Marsha Mills and Woody Hayes sound like excellent candidates for a co-mentoring situation.

NCCCS Conference 2012: Capstone Roundtable with Roanoke-Chowan Community College

Tonight’s ceremony had a session followed by a fine conference opening with a great food reception and discussion board afterward.

The Opening Session was followed by a short discussion set. I joined the Capstone Roundtable lead by Roanoke-Chowan Community College. This roundtable outlined how Roanoke-Chowan community college was using their capstone courses as an opportunity to connect real-world challenges with their students. Materials involved showed a strong connection between local businesses and college students, followed by a fair amount of pre-degree hiring. Rountable discussion progressed with an effort to get feedback on how to improve their processes and moved into general discussion and recommendations from Roanoke-Chowan Community College to participants, including lessons learned, and plans for future expansion.

After the initial discussion was closed, we descended to the expo floor in order to taste the fine trappings of the culinary departments from several schools, to visit traveling exhibits from several community colleges, and sample some entertainment. I myself enjoyed a brief discussion with Woody Hayes and Marsha Mills, Advertising and Graphic Design instructors at Wake Tech Community College, and stayed until the gospel choir had finished their initial set.

I was really looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions, and went back for a good night’s sleep.